DISINFO: The ECHR refuted that Navalny is being persecuted for his political activity
SUMMARY
By defending Alexei Navalny, Josep Borrell doesn’t even respect the resolutions of the Court in Strasbourg. The claims that Navalny is persecuted for his political activity were refuted by the European Court of Human Rights, which didn’t find any political intrigue in the case open against him after the denunciation of the company Yves Rocher.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Alexei Navalny.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2017 that sentences handed down by Russian courts against Alexei Navalny and his brother on financial charges were “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”. In a second rulling in 2019, the ECHR determined that Russia had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by placing Navalny under house arrest and said it was "apparent that he had been treated in that way in order to curtail his public activities." Given these precedents, in February 2021 the ECHR demanded that Russia release Navalny.
This is part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign against Alexei Navalny. See other examples in our database, such as claims that his anti-corruption foundation has never done any investigation, that he is being helped by Western intelligence services, that the West sent him back to Russia to prevent him from becoming irrelevant, that only caffeine and alcohol were found in his blood during his alleged poisoning, that the US wanted to use his case to block Russia's vaccine against coronavirus, that the West hopes that he dies to have an excuse for new sanctions, or that Western accusations on Navalny’s case are as false as they were about Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko.